Ascending Internal Summits

"For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them", Thich Nhat Hanh, “Being Peace”

In the previous posting, I shared a series of questions that challenged me during summitting Kilimanjaro.

-??????is planning needed or should you trust adaptation?

-??????should alignment be driven by design or allowed to emerge?

-??????what is leadership and are roles context based and ephemeral or structural elements that need to be congealed?

-??????are cliques / sub-cultures detrimental to unity and cohesiveness or an important factor for organization creativity and survival?

-??????and finally, are organizations a homogeneous entity in time and space with minor changes on the surface or rather a constantly changing collection of elements kept together miraculously?

The conclusion of the previous posting was “great observations one might say and then …so what?”. I have been trying to make my way forward towards the “so what” in the last few weeks but kept feeling something was missing. Reminded me of French recipes that lightly suggest to “add crème anglaise”. What the hell is this creme in the first place? Where do I get it from? How do I prepare it? That pushed me to reflect further on this experience and slowly additional learnings that complement the previous reflection started emerging. While the previous reflections stemmed mainly from observing others, these mainly stemmed from an internal reflection around the “Me”.?

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The stretchable Me

On the mountain, and at these altitudes, air composition differs from the one I am used to. This forces you to follow the moto of the mountain guides: Polé Polé. Slowly Slowly. For someone, as impatient and as efficiency driven as me, this was immediately dismissed. This is for the others not for Me. I discounted the advice and rushed forward leaving the group behind…. for a few minutes. I rapidly tired, the backpack got heavier and quickly the group caught up with me and left me trailing in the back. I was forced to accept that, at least on the mountain, slow is fast reminding me of the French proverb “Qui veut aller loin ménage sa monture”.

The key takeaway for me was that “Being Me”, might be great, but Me does not work everywhere. I needed to better understand where Me works and where it does not. And where it does not, is an invitation to get out of my comfort zone (willingly or not) and accept to stretch Me and grow it. ?When you start feeling uneasy, it’s your Me telling you to stay in your comfort zone, stay comfortable and decline the opportunity to grow.

On the mountain you don’t have much choice, just stretch your Me and meet your future self.

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The complex Me

In anticipation of this ascent, I spent the few months preparing to make sure I would be able to do it and to enjoy the experience. Again, my trusted reductionist approach (“simplify a problem and it becomes easier to solve”) led me to focus on the physical preparation both in terms of getting the right equipment and training my body to handle the required effort.

Once on the mountain, I realized the limit of benchmarking and planning. From a benchmarking perspective, it became evident that my ability to simplify things can be dangerous. For example, training on ascending 500-700m in a couple of hours in low altitude in Lebanon is something, and trying to ascend the same at high altitude is something completely different. Also, training to achieve time (below 2 hours) is completely irrelevant on the mountain. If you don’t reach the next camp, you will need to continue ascending even if it is 7 hours away. On the planning side, the mountain helped me realize that Me is not only physical but much more than that. I could add words to describe additional dimensions such as emotional, mental, technical and spiritual for example, but that would not do justice to the Me I discovered and started exploring. The words of Rumi started to make so much sense “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” It was evident that my reductionist view mutilated reality and led me to misunderstand and not be ready. Recognizing the complex Me was soothing, as I learned to leverage one Me dimension when another needed support and I could escape to one when another did not stimulate enough.

On the mountain, you don’t have a choice, integrate with your Complex Me and see your future self.

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The connected Me

Entering the national park at Machame gate, I looked up at the mountain top and convinced myself that it will be a walk in the park (sorry!). Then reality set in after sweating and paining hour after hour to get to the top pushing me to quit on multiple occasions. On the way down, I forgot about all the pain and sweat, then started feeling gradually better. At Mweka gate, my perspective was completely changed:?shoes removed, feet naked on the grass, and enjoying a cold beer for the first time in 2 weeks with a smirk on my face as if I were Edmund Hillary. It was easy to make myself believe that it was not that hard after all and that I did it on my own. Only I did not.

An amazing, often invisible, structure was there to allow me to achieve this. From the immediate circle around me to ones stretching back both in time and space. The immediate circle is not only the group members climbing together but the guides, porters and others (more than 30) who were there all along to make this possible. They carried, the installed, they cooked, they joked, they sang, …. They made it happen.

Beyond this immediate circle, came the rangers and other national park team members who made sure that camp sites were functional, trails were accessible as well as providing the reassurance that help is available should we need it. Beyond that, were all the others who have directly and indirectly carried me: from loved ones who were constantly thinking and encouraging me, to the multitude of equipment suppliers that I was using (just looking at the footwear of the porters made me realize how easy I was getting it) and many others.

On the mountain, you have no choice to be alone. Just open your eyes and acknowledge the amazing invisible structure that is always around to support you. Just connect your Me and discover your future self.

Hopefully this would have gained me some time to be able to work on the so what from the previous article :) ?